The house was built near its current location in 1739 by Reverend John Sergeant, a graduate of Yale University, who had established a mission for the local Mohican. Jonathan Edwards, a notable Christian minister during the Great Awakening, succeeded Sergeant as a missionary. The Mission House was improved in the 1760s with an elaborate front doorway, still extant. The Sergeant family inhabited the house until 1867. It subsequently fell into disrepair, but in 1926-1927 was restored and moved to its present location. Its gardens were created between 1928-1933 by noted landscape architect Fletcher Steele.
Today the house contains an excellent collection of eighteenth-century American furniture and decorative arts.